"Too bad I have to stop," I complained even as I smashed another giant insect, and started walking back. I had drifted away from it to hunt even more giant monsters, which had been even easier with my new hammer technique … especially since, once I got far away from the base, I stopped bothering to collect the shells.

I hadn't brought the cart with me, and bringing them back would be an unnecessary chore. However, just because I didn't bring back the shells didn't mean that the adventure wasn't useful.

[Quake Hammer (Rare) - 142]

The new variant of the mana attack once again pushed the skill to develop smoothly, until it stalled after one hundred and forty. Reaching a hundred points gave me an even better vitality attack, with its effects spreading to everything in a two-foot cone.

Unfortunately, it also consumed more than a hundred Health, meaning it couldn't be used casually. At least, not before I confirmed whether the root plants I was raising on the fourth floor were edible.

I wanted nothing more than to return to my lab and continue experimenting on mana attacks. Unfortunately, I needed to show my face upstairs occasionally. Which meant, I had to waste another hour hunting the ordinary monsters.

"I can't believe how quickly the money loses its allure," I muttered. Now that I was getting richer, I immediately lost interest in working for more money. I wanted nothing more than to stop hunting, and focus on my experiments.

However, I learned my lesson from the last time when I assumed that money would be coming indefinitely. Even with all the tricks I had discovered, making money wasn't that simple. I was able to monopolize the dungeon only because nobody else had discovered how to handle the corrosion effect, allowing me to make a ridiculous amount of money every day.

But, that income could disappear just as easily. All it would take was one of the ploys of Thomas to succeed, or someone else to find an anti-corrosion enchantment or come up with another solution.

"Maybe I should start delving deeper," I examined. While the idea of finding the entrance to the fifth floor was a very time-consuming adventure, it might prove to be necessary. Unfortunately, it needed to stay an idea, at least for the moment.

Instead, I once again went to the third floor, about to start the tedious process of hunting, when I remembered how the monsters of the fourth floor had reacted to the concentrated tainted energy. "Why not multitask," I muttered even as I went to the fourth floor and brought the chamber here.

It weighed more than a ton, especially when it was filled with broken large shells, but my metal cart easily handled that weight, while my strength handled the carrying. Once on the third floor, I closed myself in once more, and started to break the shells. The mana easily escaped the room, while tainted energy stayed in.

However, I didn't waste too much time. The moment the mana density had dropped below a certain point, I opened the hatch, and the tainted energy rushed out.

Which immediately triggered a swarm that wasn't any less impressive than the one triggered by the lure potion. Luckily, without the need to fight off a team of assassins at the same time, it was far easier to deal with.

I continued cutting them down, the sword in one hand, the extraction device in another, multitasking to play around with the shape of the sword attack even more. With the number of monsters attacking, extracting all of their shells was nearly impossible.

I was just about to see if I could modify the mana field around the sword in a way that would allow me to kill the monster and get the shell at the same time, something more interesting caught my gaze.

Some of the monsters were moving away.

It was the first time I had seen the monsters actually behave like that, which I felt like an incredible discovery. One that I wanted to observe. However, instead, I just followed and killed them, not even taking away their shells.

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It felt like letting them go away would have been irresponsible.

Only after I dealt with every monster that was trying to get away did I start playing with the mana field around the blade, trying to extract the shell and kill the monster in one blow. When the swarm finally calmed down, I was yet to succeed in that, but I made some nice progress.

Still, I was more excited about the experiment rather than adding another sixty gold coins to my account.

"So, what's going on?" I asked as I arrived at the base, and noticed the guards were looking stressed.

"The news is not good, sir," one of the guards whispered. "I heard that two of the guilds had already pulled back from the operation. And, it looks like others are considering pulling back as well."

"Oh?" I asked.

The guard nodded. "Yes, the news of the dungeon disaster has spread, and some of the guilds are already packing up."

"Really?" I asked.

"Yes. Everyone fears that we'll end up getting fired."

"Don't worry, the other guilds pulling out is excellent news," I answered, loud enough for the guards to look surprised. "Well, the less guild there is, the more money I would make," I said. Then, I smiled excessively widely. "And, I doubt any other guild masters would be generous enough to tip you guys with gold coins, right?"

I was speaking loudly to maintain their morale.

"Right, sir," the guard replied, relieved.

The world might have changed to an unrecognizable mess, but money still solved all problems.

"Now, count all of it and record it on my account," I said as I took a new cart, once again going down. Only after I had left the fort behind, I frowned.

The news of guilds pulling back was certainly not good. If Maria changed her mind about operating the dungeon alone, a lot of plans I had would have been ruined. The biggest reason I was able to achieve everything in such a short order was their lax management.

I wasn't sure if I could do the same if they changed their mind and sold the dungeon operations to someone else.

Technically, my bragging about hiring a lot of people and earning even more money from the dungeon was not a lie. I could do so, but doing so would be troubling. Having only five more fighters, each armed with one of the modified looted swords would make me a lot of money.

However, expanding that operation further didn't have the same advantage. Trying to build a guild that could single-handedly operate the dungeon meant that I needed to reveal some secrets, which, in turn, made me an even bigger target for assassination.

"No need to borrow trouble from the future," I muttered even as I passed through the gate. Ultimately, it was just gossip, and I didn't know the real scale of the problem

However, there was nothing I could do about that before Eleanor and Maria returned with the caravan, so I didn't want to waste my time.

Instead, I returned to the fourth floor. I had another experiment to make.

For that experiment, I decided to keep things simple. I went back to my hidden base and created another tree ring just a hundred yards away from the outer ring. Then, I made a cage out of the strongest anti-corrosive material I had.

Capturing one of the ordinary monsters had been slightly more troubling, but then I dragged it to the center of the woods.

Then, I made a copy of the container I used to practice meditation. I could have brought the other one back from the third floor, but that would mean that I had to carry that back and forth whenever I wanted to use it to trigger another swarm.

Assuming, of course, there wasn't a disastrous consequence.

Once the container was complete, I positioned it against the cage, and once again broke multiple shells into pieces, periodically leaving the beast under its effects.

After three bursts, the beast started to struggle, trying to run away. However, the cage was strong enough to hold it back, so after several attempts of breaking out, it started to turn listless. Then, it fell into a coma.

It was the first time I saw a monster sleeping, or doing anything that could be defined as living. So, I stayed there to watch it, curious about what was going on.

I didn't waste my time. At the same time, I started practicing with my sword, once again focusing on the mana field around the blade. Soon, I had already succeeded in spreading it two inches away from the edge blade, which gave it an incredible cutting ability.

However, it was unnecessarily mana-consuming and unstable. The moment I stopped providing extra mana, it flickered slightly, and it destabilized immediately.

"But, what if I modify the sword to better channel the mana?" I muttered, already deciding on what to work on next. Maybe I could copy the general shape of a sharpening enchantment, adding some hexagonal tubes into the metal to channel the mana better.

Such a modification would have made the sword weaker, but still, it was a worthy experiment.

However, those thoughts had been interrupted when the monster woke up, only to attack me with a ranged spit.

I didn't expect monsters to be able to evolve.

This had implications… but exploring this revelation would take some preparation, as triggering that evolution had been very wasteful. It used the material from almost ten giant insects. Hardly cost-efficient for practical purposes.

The mystery behind this occurrence, on the other hand…